by Jackson Katz
184 “Men make, distribute, and get rich on porn.”: From personal conversation with Gail Dines.
185 Until recently, men who have a public voice about pornography: One notable and powerful exception to this is John Stoltenberg’s 1989 collection of essays Refusing to Be a Man: Essays on Sex and Justice. Another thoughtful contribution to men’s writing about pornography—pro and con—is Michael Kimmel’s 1990 book Men Confront Pornography, a groundbreaking and highly readable collection of essays from men about various ways that pornography functions in men’s lives.
185 A new men’s conversation about pornography is beginning to take shape: Feminists who criticize the pornography industry are often characterized by “pro-porn feminists” as “prudes” and “Victorian moralists” who do not like the sexual or erotic choices some women make and hence seek to couch their discomfort in language about women’s exploitation. Anti-porn feminists are also often accused of being anti-male, or of caricaturing heterosexual men’s sexuality. As a heterosexual man who takes—in this book and elsewhere—a strong stance against the pornography industry for its misogyny and contribution to rape culture, I want to make it clear that I preemptively reject any attempt to characterize me as prudish or moralizing. Since my years in college when I led student opposition to the New Right and groups such as the Moral Majority, organized banned book displays, distributed contraceptive information to women and men, and participated in a pioneering peer sexuality education program at the University of Massachusetts, I have fought for women’s sexual and reproductive freedom and will continue to do so for the rest of my life. Criticism of the pornography industry is NOT criticism of women’s fundamental right to sexual expression, nor is it inherently anti-male. In fact, as I have argued in this book, in spite of some people’s efforts to produce “nonviolent, non-exploitative, non-sexist” erotic porn, I believe the pornography industry as a whole over the past generation has done incalculable damage to both women’s and men’s sexuality.
186 Robert Jensen…painfully describes as “three holes and two hands”: See Jensen, 2004.
190 There’s nothing I love more than when a girl insists to me”: From Dines, Jensen, and Russo, p. 81.
190 Its defenders—including women such as the “thinking man’s porn star” Nina Hartley: For a fascinating left/feminist response to Nina Hartley’s defense of pornography that links opposition to the porn industry’s exploitation of women (and men) to other forms of class exploitation, see Stan Goff ’s piece, entitled “The Porn Debate: Wrapping Profit in the Flag,” available at: www.notforsalebook.org/Articles/Goff_Hartley.html
191 The lawyers for the young men called the girl: The full text of Moxley’s article, entitled “Justice Takes a Pool Cue,” from the July 2–8, 2004 edition of the OC Weekly, can be found at the paper’s web site at www.ocweekly.com.
192 The Information Technology Association of America to educate people: For more information about this initiative, see www.cybercrime.gov/cybercit2.htm.
193 Why would they relentlessly sell them an endless supply of videos: In “Pornography Is a Left Issue,” Dines and Jensen write: “This misogyny is not an idiosyncratic feature of a few fringe films. Based on three studies of the content of mainstream video/DVD pornography over the past decade, we conclude that woman-hating is central to contemporary pornography. Take away every video in which a woman is called a bitch, a cunt, a slut, or a whore, and the shelves would be nearly bare. Take away every DVD in which a woman becomes the target of a man’s contempt, and there wouldn’t be much left. Mass-marketed pornography doesn’t celebrate women and their sexuality, but instead expresses contempt for women and celebrates the charge of expressing that contempt sexually.”
194 Beyond Beats and Rhymes: Hurt’s groundbreaking documentary features surprisingly candid interviews with rappers Fat Joe, Jadakiss, and Busta Rhymes, as well as Sarah Jones, Michael Eric Dyson, and student activists from Spellman College who received national attention for their criticism of the rapper Nelly after his song/video Tip Drill that showed a man running a credit card through a woman’s bare buttocks.
195 Pimps target girls or women who seem naïve, lonely: See Barry, Kathleen, 1995. In a 2004 New York Times Magazine cover story on sex trafficking: For the full article, see Landesman, 2004.
200 In fact, perhaps the most important difference between the male and female strip cultures: Women who strip experience a high amount of physical, sexual, and verbal abuse by men. In one study of eighteen women in strip clubs in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, Kelly Holsopple found that:
44 % reported that the men threatened to hurt them
39 % experienced vaginal penetration with fingers
17 % experienced anal penetration with fingers
11 % experienced attempted penetration with objects
17 % experienced forced masturbation from customers
11 % experienced rape
For more details of this study and a highly informative look at strip clubs through the experiences of women who work in them, see Holsopple, 1998.
201 This presents young heterosexual women with a difficult dilemma: Ariel Levy covers another aspect of this subject in her provocative polemic Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (2005). Although she only briefly touches on sexual violence, she chides women who have deceived themselves into thinking that lifting their shirts for Girls Gone Wild cameras, going to strip clubs, or surgically altering their bodies in order to look “hot” for men somehow demonstrates true sexual freedom.
201 Madonna’s critics argue that the many young girls who imitated her dress and style: From a 1995 piece by Rapping entitled “Power Babes and Victim Feminists” in the informative but now-defunct magazine On the Issues: The Progressive Woman’s Quarterly.
CHAPTER 11: MVP
207 “There’s nothing better than excelling at a game you love”: This quote by college and professional football star Doug Flutie comes from the Coaching Boys Into Men Playbook, produced and distributed by the Family Violence Prevention Fund. Go to www.endabuse.org for more information about the Coaching Boys Into Men campaign.
207 “If a marine is a great warrior on the battlefield”: One of the first things I did when I started working with the Marines in the mid-1990s was to attend a luncheon in the Washington D.C. area in honor of General Christmas’s retirement. He said this in his speech.
209 When Rafael Palmiero, the home-run-hitting major league baseball star: Palmiero, whose reputation was severely damaged when he tested positive for steroids in 2005, made some revealing comments about being a pitchman for Viagra in a 2002 interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. As Richard Sandomir reported in the New York Times on August 2, 2005, Palmiero said that being the athletic front man for the little blue pill was “not like doing a Nike commercial or something. I think it takes courage, and I think I’ve got what it takes to do this.”
210 Although MVP began in the sports culture: The first community to embrace MVP city-wide is Sioux City, Iowa. With visionary leadership from Judy Stafford and Cindy Waitt, and funding from the Waitt Family Foundation, MVP has been implemented in all of the public high schools in that heartland city. The principal of North High School, Alan Heisterkamp, has provided exemplary leadership in bringing in and sustaining MVP, and in developing structures to evaluate and measure outcomes.
212 MVP sessions are typically led by people: MVP has been implemented in dozens of high schools and middle schools in eastern Massachusetts. One of the most successful institutionalizations of MVP has been in the Newton, Massachusetts, public schools. Over the past six years, hundreds of Newton high school students have been trained in MVP and subsequently have given presentations to thousands of middle school students. A Newton public school teacher, Nancy Beardall has been the guiding force and tireless advocate who has nurtured MVP’s growth there.
213 The chief curricular innovation of MVP is a training tool called the Playbook: MVP playbooks are customized
for target populations. For example, there are separate playbooks for high school boys, high school girls, college men, and college women. There are also trainer’s guides that accompany each playbook. For information about how to order copies, see www.jacksonkatz.com/playbooks.html.
215 Personal option: The scenarios in MVP playbooks include several options for bystander intervention before, during, or after an incident, but the list is by no means comprehensive. A “personal option” is included in each scenario to suggest the idea that individual creativity and resourcefulness are critical aspects of successful bystander intervention.
219 False report rapes do occur: The question of how often rape is falsely reported is controversial. Many professionals and researchers in the sexual assault field believe the number to be extremely low. The reason why some studies—such as the Uniform Crime Reports—arrive at a higher number (8 percent) is that in spite of major advances in training in recent years, many law enforcement personnel unilaterally determine rape allegations to be “unfounded” if the alleged victim is drunk or on drugs, presents inconsistencies in her (or his) story, or otherwise does not meet the definition of a sympathetic victim. In some states, as recently as the 1980s rape victims were forced to take lie detector tests, which are not only highly unreliable but also serve to stigmatize victims and discourage them from coming forward.
CHAPTER 12: TEACH OUR CHILDREN WELL
227 “The belief that violence is manly”: See Kimmel, 2000.
237 Male Leadership in Schools: the Sounds of Silence: Portions of this section were first published in a chapter I wrote for the book Masculinities at School, ed. Nancy Lesko, published by Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA: 2000.
239 It would be unfair to minimize the political sensitivity of their position: A significant obstacle to the implementation of good gender violence prevention in many schools is the impassioned opposition by so-called "social conservatives"—often parents—to any educational initiatives that deal honestly and non-judgmentally with issues of sexual orientation and homophobia. At the very least, comprehensive gender violence prevention education has to include discussions about homophobia, because it plays such a powerful silencing role in male (and female) peer cultures. Also, if it is important in principle that men speak out against the abuse of women, it is equally important that heterosexuals speak out against the abuse of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, as well as transgendered people. 244 In the words of the Japanese American actor Mark Hayashi: For an interesting discussion of some of the gender and sexuality issues facing Japanese American men, see David Mura’s 1996 book Where the Body Meets Memory. 245 The most common model of gender violence prevention programming in schools: See Hanson, 1995.
245 While there is no comprehensive data documenting the sex: Nan Stein and Dominic Cappello designed an excellent teacher’s guide that incorporates the teaching of gender violence prevention into existing curricula, thus making it easier for classroom teachers to teach this material, rather than relying on outside presenters. Published in 1999 by the Wellesley Centers for Women, it is entitled Gender Violence/Gender Justice: An Interdisciplinary Teaching Guide for Teachers of English, Literature, Social Studies, Psychology, Health, Peer Counseling, and Family and Consumer Sciences (grades 7–12). I have several exercises in this guide, including an explanation of the “Sexual assault in the daily routine” exercise that I recount in the Preface to this book. To order GV/GJ, go to www.wcwonline.org/title282.html
249 Lessons about Accountability: Portions of this section first appeared in an op-ed I wrote entitled “The Price Women Pay for Boys Being Boys,” that was published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on May 13, 2001.
251 In my educational video, Tough Guise: There is a study guide for Tough Guise available for free online at www.mediaed.org.
251 Who produces most of the images and stories: For a powerful introduction to the topic of media ownership and the implications of increased corporate media consolidation on the ideological content available to the mainstream, see McChesney, 1999.
CHAPTER 13: MORE THAN A FEW GOOD MEN
252 Emerge: For more information about this program, which in 1977 became the first batterer intervention program in the country, go to www.emergedv.com.
253 “As long as we take the view”: For the full text of President Mandela’s speech, go to www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/mandela/1997/sp971122.html.
254 RAVEN: RAVEN was founded in 1978. For more information about RAVEN and its history in the batterer intervention movement, go to www.ravenstl.org.
254 Men Stopping Violence: Men Stopping Violence, founded in Atlanta in the early 1980s, describes itself as “a social change organization dedicated to ending men’s violence against women. MSV works locally and nationally to dismantle belief systems, social structures, and institutional practices that oppress women and children and dehumanize men themselves. We look to the violence against women’s movement to keep the reality of the problem and the vision of the solution before us. We believe that all forms of oppression are interconnected. Social justice work in the areas of race, class, gender, age, and sexual orientation are all critical to ending violence against women.” For more information, go to www.menstoppingviolence.org.
254 National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS): For more information about the history of NOMAS and its ongoing activities, go to www.nomas.org.
254 Oakland Men’s Project: The Oakland Men’s Project, founded in 1979, was a pioneering, communitybased model for anti-sexist men’s advocacy. It was also an early leader in developing educational materials about men’s violence against women, masculinity, racism, homophobia, and the connections among and between them. For example, OMP developed the highly effective “Act Like a Man” box exercise, which has been used by progressive educators for decades, and which was incorporated into MVP trainings starting in 1993. For more information about how to use the box exercise, go to http://toolkit.endabuse.org/Resources/ActLikeAMan. Some of the early activist-educators who created OMP and contributed to its work include many well-known figures in anti-sexist men’s work such as Paul Kivel, Robert Allen, Allen Creighton, and Victor Lewis.
254 Men Stopping Rape: Founded in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1983, Men Stopping Rape is an anti-sexist men’s organization devoted to promoting sexual assault education for men. The membership of MSR consists of students on the UW-Madison campus and men working and living in the community. According to its website, MSR covers a wide range of ages, upbringings, orientations, and experiences: “We share a desire to live in a world free of violence against women and against men. Men join MSR for a variety of reasons: many of us have known someone in our lives who has been assaulted; some of us have come to question our own behavior and the role violence has played in our ‘initiation’ into modern masculine culture, and we desire to learn how to avoid perpetrating assault; all of us benefit from an atmosphere of support and understanding.”
Among its many activities, MSR has provided workshops for dormitories, fraternities, academic departments, high schools, group homes, church groups, prisons, and service providers for “at risk” youth. Workshop presenters are volunteers who have completed MSR’s thirty-hour workshop training program, gaining facility to discuss such topics as sexuality, masculinity, enculturation, homophobia, racism, violence/abuse, male survivors, and personal safety. They produce and market a brochure entitled “What One Man Can Do to Help Stop Rape,” a poster series describing the myths surrounding sexual assault, and a thirty-minute video and study guide which have been distributed to campus and community organizations throughout the U.S., Canada, and Australia. For more information, see www.men-stopping-rape.org.
254 DC Men Against Rape: The nationally well-known group Men Can Stop Rape is an outgrowth of D.C. Men Against Rape (formerly Men’s Rape Prevention Project) a volunteer profeminist collective founded in 1987 by a handful of men seeking to raise their own and their community’s consciousness about men’s violence against wo
men. In 1997, MCSR incorporated as a nonprofit organization with the goal of carrying forward and expanding on its original mission to increase men’s involvement in efforts to end men’s violence. Through awareness-to-action education and community organizing, MCSR promotes gender equity and builds men’s capacity to be strong without being violent. MCSR describes itself as “a concerned community of men and women of all ages, from many walks of life, working locally and nationally for peace, equity, and gender justice. We are men and women who find strength in compassion and nonviolence and who strive to support young men who are courageous enough to challenge the ‘rape culture’ in which we live.” Their web site is www.mencanstoprape.org.
254 Real Men, an anti-sexist men’s organization: Real Men was an all-volunteer activist organization from 1988–1998 whose main purpose was to call public attention to men’s role in ending men’s violence against women. We produced and distributed literature (e.g., “10 Things Men Can Do to End Gender Violence”); organized fundraisers for battered women’s programs; sponsored lectures, speak-outs, and debates; handed out leaflets at Fenway Park and the old Foxboro Stadium that urged fathers, coaches, camp counselors, and youth workers to speak out against men’s violence; organized protests against sexist media, including the comedians Andrew Dice Clay and Sam Kinison; and appeared on radio and television talk shows.